Christmas Is Around the Corner!!

   
 
December 7, 2015

Dear Parents,

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is going soooo fast. Students are very excited about all the holiday activities that are going on around them. Many students have been coming to school so happy to share about all the fun family activities whether it be attending the tree lighting ceremony, going tree hunting, trimming the tree, or about the "Elves" that have been visiting them. It is such a magical but busy time!

Math

Our work in math centered around composing and decomposing shapes and identifying and extending patterns.

Students spent quite a bit of time cutting out shapes and putting them together to compose another shape from the orignal shapes. Students got very creative with their composed shapes!  

We also spent some time decomposing a square (tangram) into 7 shapes, (5 triangles, 1 parallelogram, and 1 square) called "tans". After cutting them apart students had to try and put them back into a square, this was a little tricky. After working at this challenge for awhile each group was given a tangram template with the lines showing the placement of the shapes.

Finally, we worked on reading, naming, extending, and creating patterns. Students used shapes to create a pattern with a pattern unit of 3 or 4. We practiced with patterns that used orientation and students were encouraged use that attribute in their own pattern.

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This pattern is an AABC pattern. It's repeating unit is 2 triangles pointing up, 1 small triangle pointing to the right, and 1 triangle pointing down.

Here is the homework for Week 17...

Monday	Review pg. 165&166
Tuesday	Pg. 167&168
Wednesday	Computation Worksheet
Thursday	Word Problem Worksheet

Writing

The writers of Room 17 will be moving into informative writing. Students have spent some time this week discussing Christmas in the United States. We focused on traditions, decorations, music, and food. As a class we are researching and writing about Christmas in Germany. Students will be learning about their special traditions, decorations, music, and food. This work is getting students ready for our next project that will focus on research, economics and geography.

Language Arts

In Language Arts students finished up our unit on capitalization. Students enjoyed reviewing capitalization by working with a partner on Scoot! In Scoot students go from place to place in the room working completing capitalization exercises. .

Students assessed on capitalization this week. Although students did quite well on the assessment overall, we will still be working hard to make sure that the capitalization skills learned carries into our daily writing.

Projects

This past week students finally got to heat and cool their matter of choice and make observations. Students also worked on their group tri-fold board. We will be presenting our findings to our 1st grade friends next week.

As the time until Christmas gets shorter, we all get so busy!! My hope for all my 2nd grade families is that even within the "holiday rush" you are able to step away and enjoy the beauty of the season. Here's to a peaceful week.

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here is some Reading Information from Mrs. Loop...

Hello Second Grade Families,

Last week we practiced determining the main topic of multi-paragraph reading passages.  Students continued meeting with me in their reading groups and assigned books were sent home nightly.  Last week’s spelling words were part of the -ay spelling pattern.  This week’s spelling words will be part of the -ow spelling pattern.  It is hard to believe that there are only 8 days of instruction left before Christmas break begins.  This week will be a normal week of reading and assessing.  Please make sure your child is completing their 20 minutes of reading each night.

Katy Loop